by Ivan Svogor
Busy Skies
The Council Dissolution
a science fiction novel by
Ivan Svogor
BUSY SKIES: THE COUNCIL DISSOLUTION
This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 Ivan Svogor
All rights reserved.All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
First edition
To the road ahead...
Prologue
It was a busy morning for councilor Larsson, he was handling a number of important calls, messages and attended several meetings. However, he was mostly feeling sorrow and disappointment for failing in his duty. As he was preparing for his final delivery, this thought dominated his mind. He walked up to the podium, opened his notes and started speaking.
“Dear people of Earth, we are almost halfway through the next millennium. Earth today is a very different place. There are no more wars, economic meltdowns, racial tensions, energy crises, and so on. We have created a society that our ancestors could have only imagined, and for the first time in history, for several centuries we are not behaving destructively, but we have managed to overcome our selfishness. Thanks to our great sacrifices in the early 21st century, I would like to hope that we advanced on the evolutionary scale, emotionally and intellectually. The price was high, the global terrorism war, racial and economic wars of the 23rd century, famine, diseases, pandemics, and so on. Facing all of this, we finally found our place on this planet. We started looking up to the sky and we rediscovered our place in the universe. Space is our ultimate challenge now, we care for one another, our well being is the norm, while day to day work to survive is just a tale that history teachers barely understand. We had to reach rock bottom to reveal the full misery and destruction we are capable of.
Though the population size was drastically reduced, in the ways we are trying to forget, fortunately, we never had a post-apocalyptic scenario that would have prevented us from getting on the right track. Centuries after, we have transformed our consciousness from the wealth and domination class system to a Converging Need-Based System. I am proud of the societal, scientific, and economic leap that we have made, to make this possible. Furthermore, many of you know, one of the greatest challenges was education, through which people focused less on the past and their differences, but rather on their inevitable common and shared future. With the systematic application of evolutionary rules to the economy, greed has turned into wellbeing, and while there were those who argued that this won’t be sustainable, we have all proved them wrong. Thanks to this, we opened a door to a prosperous future with a focus on knowledge and happiness without cringing stress, depression, and the necessity to compete through force.”
“We also abolished money. The economy today is not something that would have been easily conceivable at the end of the previous millennium. We have freed ourselves from fear, selfishness, money, nationalities, races, religions. Thanks to automation, there is no longer need for measuring a nation’s strength by manpower, but we consider nationalities, just remnants of the past, and tradition. Today, we are one people, which respects and cherishes our traditions, but no longer use those to divide us but to display culture. Although, in younger generations, I’ve begun to notice they care less and less even about our traditions.
As you all know, the concept of countries today is just a historical reference for geographical locations. And while this may be easy for us to understand, consider our past briefly, to appreciate how far we have come.
We are fortunate enough to care about our happiness, advancements in our fields, societal perception, and acceptance. We are not bound by our economic status to dictate how well off we are going to be. If you are good enough and persistent, hard-working, you can do and achieve whatever. For example, if you want to be an artist, or you want to be an oceanographer, you are able to get proper education and do it. The wisdom of our forefathers allows us to do that, because the society we have created, always seems to find a balance, and this is no coincidence. The lack of material motivation simply leads people to take jobs that they desire and are capable of doing, while the most mundane and laborious tasks are automated. Unfortunately, there are those who opt-out of our society and decide to not participate in it, who just do nothing and enjoy life. Although, we sometimes unjustly look down on those people and don’t bother too much with them, they do not get much recognition from society, but nor do they need it or ask for it, and this is the key. But for the great majority, our biggest motivation is how society perceives us, and how important a role we have. However, it seems to me we still have a long way to grow in this area. While most of us can agree that not contributing to our society isn’t the best option, many times we overestimate our role in the important positions.”
“Furthermore, we must not forget that through our painful past, we learned how to use our technological advancement meant for destruction and misery in the way of prosperity and good. I cannot think of a better example than our medicine. Our continuous need for growth has led us to the very edge of total destruction of this planet and its biodiversity. There were too many of us and our selfish drives led us to the inevitable collapse, which today, we think was due to the lack of collective intelligence, sensibility, critical thinking, and tolerance, while the illusion of democracy set the stage for economic wars. What followed, and here I’m talking about terrifying testing and modifications of the human genome which only led to horrific and sad stories. While we were the only exception to the laws of natural selection, the technology which arose with an incentive to do evil, ended up to be the key to our success. Therefore, the aforementioned medicine, which is just one example. By the late 22nd century, it was apparent that medicine is too influential on human development so a decision was made to guide human evolution gradually and humanely to restore natural selection and order. The human DNA is modified in the way that children no longer inherit the hereditary disease, and slowly increase human intelligence. It was calculated how much this can grow depending on the society and the development. This means, we are able to control the intelligence bell curve and intentionally create more geniuses than before, but also spread the curve in the way that there are people from all over the spectrum. This has shown a good distribution of people in the work market that can move society forward. Since the entire society is strongly knowledge and fact-based, there are very rare and mostly ignored movements that advance belief based ideas. Hence, most diseases are no longer present, and today we typically live to be around 140 years old.
Ultimately, this finally made us accept our place in the natural world. The need for repressive measures of population control is gone, and for the first time in history is stable at 9 billion, without the need or incentive for further growth. Many of us rarely have more than two children, while many also choose not to become parents. Our schooling is organized in accordance with previous research and now our children spend more time with their peers, parents don't get too busy with them but still have a huge role in their upbringing, alongside professionals who devote their lives raising children from their young age. Today the most important thing we want to teach our children in schools is the respect of others, our society, and our past, but with a strong emphasis on what lies ahead. They discover their interests and conti
nue their further education in a selected area. Teenagers and young adults, therefore, travel a lot, all over the world to find out as much as they can about their field of study. According to our current statistics, we are ready to become independent professionals by the age of 45. We developed strong feelings about our own lives, control of our personal challenges, achievements, and advancements of society through our own work. Therefore, we have become fairly good at decoupling our feelings with work, without being too hard on each other. After 45, people usually focus on a career and continue to work until retirement, which happens around the age of 90. After that, most of the people continue contributing with their experience, taking in interns, and passing on the knowledge. This continues to the old age, while some also engage more into society by taking decision making or executive positions, according to the rules we have placed forth. But, most people settle down and enjoy their retirements in their own way. Yet, there have been ones that disagree with this, calling it fake harmony, which makes our race stagnant.
We know, and we have learned that critique should be taken seriously and addressed so that we get even better. We still need to work hard on our happiness and on protecting ourselves from depression by finding our purpose and place in society. We have grown cities with very similar styles and easy-apartments. Therefore, traveling is easier and people who don't like it, alongside with moving, can now adapt to new environments very quickly, by creating routines in a familiar environment. As some of you might know it or live in one. Those places are perfect for frequent travelers without a permanent address, easy-apartments are fully furnished, stacked up at all times, and there are a bunch of robots making it clean for anyone traveling to just settle in. It also makes it easy to dress in the same clothing all the time, for people with decision fatigue. I think I'm a good example of this, as are all the councilors. And, as you have noticed, we are not all dressed the same, but in the past, such decisions would be considered weird. While mundane, that little leap actually speaks a lot about things we care about, and the lengths we go to in order to make our lives better. Furthermore, consider laundry washing which is fully automated, and the drop’n’take technology which allows us to travel light, where ever, whenever, whiteout hours of packing and preparation. Please pause for the moment and think about it. In the past, and still today, some people don't like traveling and cannot handle it, and since a good expert at times needs to relocate, researchers worked hard to make people less dependent on their accommodation. The initial depression of the new town, to the rage for having to go, to sadness, fearfulness, and anxiety. That deep dark feeling when faced with no goal, nothing to do. No more your favorite park to run or road to ride a bike, no more known mountains to climb, no more friends who know you since before you knew yourself. Just left with the unknown. Some people thrive when faced with this, others have serious issues that eventually interfere with their work, private life, brain chemistry, and ultimately ability to feel like an accepted member of society. Therefore, we took another leap and successfully mitigated this common issue once the world became open. We really need to appreciate our fortune and the time we are living in. Who today still remembers the obsession with economic classes, future, mortgages, and so on? - The examples I’ve provided along with upbringing and education, and therapy when suitable, this is fully mitigated.
And finally, there are the stars. Looking up, one might also notice that the sky is very different. Some may say polluted, while others stand in awe of the marvel we have created. One can sit in the warm summer evening, staring at the beautiful night sky, and with a bit of focus clearly see nearby space habitats, a favorite vacation destination for our teenagers. Vast stretches of roads on the ground have been replaced with materials that grow trees, while the traffic moved into the sky redefining the term highway. Having a wheeled buggy is only for the bravest, as venturing in the wilderness is somewhat dangerous due to all the different animals living there. One could say that people have somewhat disconnected from nature, and got connected to the sky. While exercising outside one can rarely go 15 minutes without seeing a ship going into lower earth orbit, or even to the Moon.
To power all of this, we cracked some of the key technologies which propelled us to become a Type I civilization. The energy to fuel our civilization is harvested from the sun, combined with fusion, and the materials are mostly mined on the moon. Due to this, physics and chemists had a huge impact on our development. Science is now guiding our decisions and makes our lives better. Along with automation that offloads hard work on this planet, on the Moon, our outposts on Venus, and many space stations near our mining facilities. And even Mars, which was a holy grail of the past explorers got colonized. Unfortunately, we learned the hard way that terraforming was simply not possible due to its inability to hold an atmosphere. But regardless of this, the dream of scientists and students to spend several semesters at Martian research facilities is now very common.”
Councilor Larsson then took a pause, he looked across the room, took a deep breath, made a frowning expression, and continued.
”Please forgive me for this brief history lesson, but bear with me just for a few more minutes. As I was saying, we are past materialism, and worrying about our security and safety. We base our decisions, not on our differences, hunger for power, or religions. We need to be rational, sympathetic above all. And while some scars of history are still healing, it is my great regret to announce that we have failed, or better yet, I have failed you. You see, we must never forget our humble beginnings and our history, for that is the path to scarring our future again. While we have convinced ourselves that with all our technologies, we are different from our ancestors from the turn of the millennium, human nature, is still pretty much the same. There are no shortcuts and there is a long way ahead. We were reminded of this in light of the recent events.
Having said that, I dissolve this council. - So, how did we end up here?”
Chapter 1
Most commonly people live in the cities, but this is not absolute. While people did reconcile with nature, they rarely venture into the wilderness. But then, there are those who say goodbye to the city, and look for a new life in farming, gardening, and studying living things on Earth, and the Winson family was one of those weirdos. They were farming a piece of land, in a small village close to a town. The landscape of this area is stunning, as it is stretching through a valley surrounded by hills and mountains. A river slowly snaked its way through the middle of the valley as if artificially created, following the tractor road, where Jess, the youngest Winson liked to run. The fields in the valley hosted a variety of crops, but cows, sheep, and chickens dominated the area with their calm peaceful indifference to the environment.
Unfortunately, within this valley, people weren't able to appreciate sunsets as the sun would set beyond the mountains but still provided daylight for some time. As this was in motion, Jess was running her favorite route competing with her virtual self from several years back. She was breathing heavily but clenched her teeth and kept going, as she finally started catching up to her younger self. A finish line that she imagined was an old willow right next to the old stone bridge leading to her parents’ home. Both young and old Jess passed the finish line together which present-day Jess considered a personal win. I still have it, she thought to herself as she stopped to appreciate the highway in the sky. As people cracked the flying car technology, the skies were busy, but regulated, as everyone was to fly following virtual sky roads. As she was admiring the hundreds of white clouds that were grazing the sky as sheep, a familiar-looking har appeared from one of the clouds and flew in her direction. Hars, or hovering-cars, were pretty common, however, it wasn’t common to fly through clouds, and she immediately knew who it was.
That was Hank Bishoff, her transportation for a research stay at the Antarctic research facility. As one of the perks of joining, she got to choose her transportation, and so, she thought choosing Hank would be a good way to reconnect with an
old friend, whom she haven’t seen for almost a year now. Slowly, she was getting her breath, with the sight of Hank, it suddenly hit her she’s moving to the South pole. A feeling of discomfort and excitement overwhelmed her, however as a young computational chemist she was looking forward to the new unique experience. She picked up a slow pace and proceeded to the house, as the har was landing.
“Hey, hey, Jess! I’ve managed to catch a bit of that race. Are you getting a bit out of breath there? Ha, ha”, asked Hank laughing.
Jess appreciated the provocation and responded, “Yes, a bit. But I’m pretty sure I can handle any of the military tough guys without breaking a sweat.”
As Hank exited the har, he started laughing and hugged hugged her, while saying, “Ha, ha, it’s nice to see you Jess!”.
Since Hank was an old crush of Jess, her heart skipped a beat for a second but she managed to control it. Hank was just a kind of a macho, cocky pilot that a geeky scientist like Jess would be attracted to, just as opposed magnets. Though Hank was one of the best pilots on the planet, he was a meteorology nerd and very interested in science, so he asked her, “Congratulations on your new research opportunity. Have you already made a research plan?”. They slowly walked up to a small garden Gazebo to have dinner, she immediately started talking.
“Of course I made a plan. I’ll tell you all about it over dinner, I’ll just quickly hit the shower. While I do that I’ll give you a hint, what properties do silicon and carbon share?”
